Movies: Samuel Ramey

Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Viennese composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart....

Claude D'Anna's film of Verdi's Macbeth is a gloomy affair, stressing the descent into madness of the principal villains. It's acted by the singers of the Decca recording of the opera (with two substitutions of actors standing in for singers) and the...

In ancient Babylon, SEMIRAMIDE (Anderson) encourages her lover Assur (Ramey) to murder her husband, King Ninus. Her son, Ninius, disappears, believed dead, and Semiramide rules in her own right. 15 years later, as the opera opens, she is about to ann...

Don Quichotte (Don Quixote) is an opera in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Caïn. It was first performed on 19 February 1910 at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo....

This tribute to James Levine, first shown on PBS, was only part of that glorious evening. Here we have the whole performance, up to three hours. I could not stop watching these discs. Let me say this much; Levine has done for the Met, making it the p...

A concert performance of Leonard Bernstein's "On the Town" performed at the Barbican Centre in London in 1993, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas and hosted by Betty Comden and Adolph Green...

This elegant romance is the least-known work of the mature Giacomo Puccini . The story concerns a kept woman who defies convention to chase a dream of romantic love with an earnest, if naïve, young man. This Met Opera production features the dynamic ...

Natalie Dessay and Rolando Villazón bring Jules Massenet's classic opera to the stage in this dazzling production. In 18th-century France, Manon (Dessay) faces life as a nun, despite catching the eye of many men. When she meets the handsome but penni...

The historic 1984 revival performance of Il viaggio a Reims was the first time in over 150 years the opera was performed. Set in a luxurious hotel in Plombières-les-Bains, the opera follows a diverse group of aristocratic characters as they gather to...

Live from La Scala 1991...

Wichita Grand Opera opens a new production of Puccini’s masterpiece Turandot on Friday, August 28, 2015, at 7pm in WGO’s home theater of Century II Concert Hall in Wichita, Kansas. WGO makes its debut at Overland Park’s Carlsen Center with a second p...

This production of Giuseppi Verdi's opera based on Macbeth, the famed play by William Shakespeare, is a musical succès d'estime but falls short in the cinematic arena. Shirley Verrett stars as the murderous and ambitious Lady Macbeth, Leo Nucci co-st...

1989 recording of the San Francisco Opera production of Mefistofele: Boito's retelling of Goethe's Faust...

1995 recorded performance of Charles Gounod's Faust at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, with conductor John Nelson....

Jacques Offenbach's opera Les contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffman) shown in the Teatro alla Scalla...

James Levine’s love for this seldom-heard score infuses every measure of Verdi’s music. Superstar Luciano Pavarotti heads the cast as the Muslim warrior prince Oronte who converts to Christianity out of love for the Italian Giselda (Lauren Flanigan)—...

Bela Bartok's and Arnold Schoenberg's haunting excursions into the nightmare of the unconscious....

The Rake's Progress is an English-language opera from 1951 in three acts and an epilogue by Igor Stravinsky. The libretto, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is based loosely on the eight paintings and engravings A Rake's Progress (1733–1735...

Performed at the Lincoln Center. Conducted by Sarah Caldwell. The staging and costuming explicitly telegraphed the characters. For example, Rosina (Beverly Sills) has a gown with feathers and her room resembles a birdcage complete with a swing, tel...